our time devour
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Christine travels through time and loves both Erik and Sorelli, and Erik is the one who stays in the present, and loves her even in her absence. A companion piece to long love's day.
1. 1

**A/N: Written for notaghost3, who requested Erik's perspective of the time travel au as her prize for coming second in the PotO AU Fics Contest**

* * *

He realizes, somewhere between their third date when she tells him of what she is, and the day she comes to him in a terrible state still fresh from 1939, that he is to spend most of his life waiting.

Waiting for her to leave.

And waiting for her to come back.

(Even now, this love that has bloomed beneath his heart such a new and fresh thing, he knows that she will always come back.)

It is, he supposes, not the worst way to live.

Better than being alone.

* * *

He has been alone since he was nineteen and his grandfather died.

That tall and proud Galway man, transplanted to the east seventy years ago, and still there was Connemara in the keenness of his eyes, the slight shrewdness of his jaw. Seventy years and still he spoke Irish with an ease that transcended his surroundings, taught it to him when he was the smallest of little boys at his knee.

Irish, and the accordion, and a love for all music, no matter the instrument, no matter the singer.

The world could never be the same, without him in it.

Even at nineteen, he fancied he would always be alone.

* * *

He never expected, that day in the Roost, two shots of whiskey after burning his throat, his fingers lose and nimble on the piano keys, that he would find the girl who would become his world.

She buys him a strawberry daiquiri, and her smile lights up the room, cleverness shining in her eyes, and the brush of her fingertips against his hand makes his heart lurch.

(Her first kiss, a handful of days later, caught him unawares, and he knew then and there that he was lost.)

* * *

He learns early, what it means to love a time traveller. The absences and the waiting are only part of it. There is the odd grief that comes in waves, the way a single word can remind her oof a sentence spoken eighty years ago and only two weeks in her past. The obsessions with people long dead. The odd little pilgrimages to different places.

The love for people she would never have met, if it were not for this curse, this gift.

(He can never decide, if it is a good thing or a bad thing. But he does know that if it were not for it, she would not be the girl she is, would not know so much of the world, and, perhaps, he would not love her.)

* * *

What use is there in being jealous of someone twenty-two years dead?

* * *

He has heard of Sorelli Conway before of course. His grandfather was a big fan of her films. But he looks at her now through different eyes, tries to find the girl that Christine knew as a child, and the woman that she loves across time in an impossible way. It is not an obsession because an obsession would imply jealousy, but it is a fascination, and it fills his periods of waiting with meaning.

He learns about archives and newspaper clippings, finally uses his entitlement to search the history section of the library, and takes out every book he can find that might reference her.

Then he realizes this is an incredible undertaking, and it can hardly all be accurate if it cannot mention Christine and her time travelling. He reads the Wikipedia page instead, wonders how much of it is fact and how much fiction, and how much, maybe, an embellishment of Christine's own.

The names Philippe and Raoul De Chagny twinge oddly familiar.

* * *

It is early June when he meets the woman Christine says is like a grandmother to her. Anea can only be in her late sixties, so he decides this might be more of an honorary title than anything else. She doesn't seem old enough to be grandmother to someone like Christine.

(He will learn, soon enough, just how young Christine's father was when she was born, and just how young he was when he died.)

Anea welcomes him with open arms, tells him she is happy Christine has found someone, and the faint Swedish in her accent wraps his heart just as warm as her arms do when she hugs him.

His own grandmother died when he was little, and although she is not bound to Christine by blood, he is grateful for her acceptance.

* * *

Christine is so soft in his arms, so soft and delicate. He kisses her gently, kisses her lips and kisses her throat, and kisses a trail down her belly, never taking his arms from around her as he nuzzles into her hip. She gasps and whimpers beneath him, and each sound she makes tugs at something in his heart, her fingers tightening in his hair as he mouths her, gently, carefully.

It's only been six weeks, but afterwards, when she turns him over, when she presses herself so close to him he can feel her heart beating next to his own, he knows this is where he wants to stay, always.

It swells in his throat, burns on the tip of his tongue to make some sort of confession, but he swallows it down. It might be true, it is true, but the words are too delicate, too fragile to give form, not when he knows she loves another too, not until she speaks them to him first.

* * *

(He compromises, and whispers them in her ear as she sleeps, the blankets wrapped around them both, her body still pressed tight to his, and he kisses the shell of her ear, and curls around her to keep her safe from the nightmares that lurk in the darkness. He might not be able to keep her in this time, but so help him he will do all he can to keep her happy.)

* * *

It is two days later that he meets Raoul de Chagny.

He half-expects him to be introduced as "like a grandfather", but instead Christine smiles and calls him her dearest friend, and Raoul's answering smile is gentle, and just a little cheeky for a man who must be more than ninety.

(Who is definitely more than ninety, if Erik's memory of Wikipedia is right, and considering that it is his brother that Christine held as he died after the bomb exploded on his boat.)

"I've heard a great deal about you," he says, shaking Erik's hand, but there is a certain glimmer in his eye that makes Erik wonder when, and from who.

* * *

She goes to 1939, and comes back in a state of misery so complete that nothing he does can make her smile. He plays her songs, and tells her terrible jokes and not so terrible ones, and holds her close as they dance, and compliments her melancholy violin playing, but nothing he says so much as makes her twitch her lips.

He doesn't see her for three days, and a nausea caught between anxiety and fear tightens in his throat, keeps interfering with his coding, even as he tries to tell himself that she must simply have travelled, must simply have gone somewhen and hasn't come back yet.

No matter how he tries to talk himself around, the worry refuses to go away.

He goes to see Anea, who says that Christine is still in this time, as far as she knows, and suggests he go to visit Raoul de Chagny.

It feels like an intrusion, going to Malahide. He's sure Raoul is a perfectly nice man, and he means the world to Christine, but something about him feels too knowing, too certain, and he knows Christine is in love with Sorelli Conway, the vagaries of time notwithstanding, but part of him whispers she might be a little in love with the other de Chagny as well, the one who died, and he's not sure how he feels about that at all.

Even facing the door, he is very tempted to go back to the train and go home and try texting her again, but he's here now, he's here and he might as well find out.

Besides, what's important is that Christine is well. Nothing more than that.

He braces himself, and knocks.

* * *

Raoul de Chagny always strikes him as remarkably fit for a man of ninety-one, his hunched shoulders and reliance on a cane set aside. He is never sure what he expects of someone so old, but he knows it was not for Raoul to open the door and nod at him, and invite him in without asking any questions.

Certainly not for him to anticipate the very first question he would ask, and say, "she's asleep on the couch."

(Is he really that transparent?)

Asleep on the couch Christine is, curled up beneath a blanket, her blonde hair poking out, and the relief that washes over Erik is weakening.

He's not sure what he would have done if she were not here.

"You look like you need a drink." And the tone leaves no room for questions.

* * *

He learns many things that day. That the last time she went into the past, to 1939, Sorelli told her she never wanted to see her again, and that this was because Sorelli figured out Christine knew that De Chagny (and he must learn to think of him as Philippe) was going to die. That Christine went to Glasnevin to visit his grave in this time, the real time, and then came to Raoul and didn't tell him much at all aside from those basic facts before falling asleep.

(How does she bear it? Carrying this weight of knowledge with her?)

(He told her before he would take it from her if he could. And he would, oh how he would.)

That Sorelli will someday forgive Christine, but she can't be allowed to know that, not yet, because her own future self has told Raoul that she must first live it.

(He wonders will he ever meet her future self. Will his presence be important enough in her life for her to come back to?)

That Raoul has known Christine since 1945, but she has only known him since 2008.

That's the part that makes Erik realize he needs a stronger drink than tea.

Raoul directs him to a bottle of chartreuse in the cupboard under the sink.

The first sip of it is like paint stripper.

The second is surprisingly pleasant.

* * *

After that day, it becomes Erik's habit to visit Raoul whenever Christine is away. He is beginning to realize that Raoul has been just as lonely as he has, if not lonelier. He has his work, the people in the department, the different professors in different departments who need him to work on programs and codes for them. Raoul's only regular callers, it seems, are Christine and Anea.

They don't always talk of Christine. They don't even talk of her most of the time. They do talk of politics, and he finds Raoul surprisingly liberal for a man in in his nineties, and then supposes he shouldn't be stereotyping people he barely knows. They talk of music, and discover several points of similarity, including jazz and folk and classical pieces, and he feels a little touched to hear that a future Christine has played his pieces for raoul and he likes them.

(And then he wonders, as he often does, how much of his life does Raoul know from these older Christines that visit. How important will he be to her, for Raoul to know of him before he and Christine ever met?)

(Did Christine know about him before they met?)

They discuss books, and his work, and he finds Raoul keenly interested in his research, in coding and software development and 3D modeling, and he already knew he was an academic once upon a time, and is at least part of the reason Christine is so committed to academia, but knowing it and seeing that penetrating interest are two very different things.

They discuss Christine's research, too, and it is the first time he finds himself really interested in history. That Raoul lived through the period and events she's analyzing, that Raoul actually knew the people she's writing about.

When Christine mentioned it it was the first time Erik ever heard of Noël Browne, but after talking to Raoul he decides he needs to learn more, if only so he can talk to her about it.

Raoul grins a grin that lights up his eyes like stars, and tells him to start with Against the Tide.

* * *

He looks forward to his teas with Raoul. He looks forward, too, to his visits with Anea. Anea tells him all about Christine, and it is his favorite topic to learn about now, all about how she was as a little girl, full of adventures and mischief. How she loved stories and climbing trees and pretending she was a princess or a pirate or the queen of the fairies. How she loved her books and her toy animals and how her father would sit on the floor for hours and play with her and let her braid his hair. Erik already knew that Christine's father was the same as her, that her mother died when she was a baby, but it is the first time he learns so much about this man, an accomplished historian and musician in his own right, and whose daughter was the centre of his world.

He wishes he could meet him, wishes he could shake his hand and tell him Christine would turn out just fine, and know that the man would approve of him.

* * *

There is not much he has to give her, except for his love, and he will give her every piece of it he can.

* * *

**A/N: If you enjoy, please do review!**

**Next chapter is due on Monday and I estimate 3 chapters in total.**


	2. 2

He takes her for drinks, he takes her dancing. He plays his piano for her and dusts off his accordion and brings her tea when she's at her research and keeps spare clothes ready for when she arrives out of the past. Sometimes they play together, her with her violin while he is at his piano, and the music they create is improvised and all the more beautiful for it. He reads to her as she dozes, and she sleeps curled up in his arms, and he comes close to telling her he loves her ten times a day but each time something whispers that she is not ready yet to speak the words so he keeps them inside but he knows they are true and knows that she feels the same. And he brushes the curls from her sleeping face, and wishes he could take away the pain inside of her.

* * *

It is September when he meets her father.

It is one thing knowing the man was a time traveller, it is quite another when she comes to him and tells him there is someone she wants him to meet.

He is not sure how he expected Alexander Daaé to be. Shorter than him, he supposes (correctly as it happens, but then again he is unusually tall and Raoul is shorter than him and would be even if he wasn't stooped), grey-haired because he's seen pictures of the man before he died and there was a shocking amount of grey in his hair for someone who was only thirty-nine when he died (when he lets himself think about it, he's troubled to think that time travellers might have shorter lifespans).

He does not expect this young blond man, probably only his age, to smile at him and shake his hand.

What are you supposed to do when you meet your girlfriend's father? And he's dead but this is him from when she was a little girl?

He swallows to keep himself from staring, and shakes his hand in return.

That Mister Daaé pulls him in for a hug is a shock, and the words he leans up to whisper in his ear make Erik's eyes water.

"I know how hard this is," he whispers, "twenty minutes ago she was six and now—but I am so, so glad that she has someone like you."

And he claps Erik on the back, and pulls back, tears shining in his own eyes, and nods.

"Call me Alex."

* * *

Someone like you

Someone like you

Someone

Like

You

* * *

And how he loves her is beyond words, and it has only been six months.

* * *

Christmas comes, their first Christmas together, and they celebrate it quietly with Anea and Raoul. There are gifts passed around, and food, and the fire crackles as Christine burrows into his side, carols playing softly on the stereo, and he feels like he could say it now, feels like he could tell her, and he brushes her lips with his, and she smiles into his mouth, and it's on the tip of his tongue, so close he can taste the words, his heart stuttering in his chest and just as he opens his mouth, just as he is about to breathe them, they dissipate like so much air, and he swallows and kisses her again, and holds her a little tighter, and lets his arms speak what his tongue cannot.

* * *

When Raoul spends his birthday, 6 January, in hospital with pneumonia, Erik goes with Christine to visit him. Not even a year, but how he has become attached to this old man, and the thought of something happening to him, the thought of him no longer being—

If this is how he feels, then he cannot imagine the sort of fear that must be in Christine's heart.

He only stays a little while, himself, long enough to wish Raoul as good a birthday as he can have, and to tell him he's found some lovely jazz records to give him when he's well, and Raoul is in good spirits and smiles at him in spite of the oxygen he's on, and squeezes his hand and thanks him, and Erik can't take it any more, can't think of what else he can say except I'm glad you're not dying and he can hardly say that, so he makes his excuses and slips back out, to give Raoul and Christine room to say anything they might want to.

It is a little while later that Christine slips out, and hardly has the door behind her closed when her face crumples, and Erik's heart twists, fearing the worst, fearing terrible news, and he pulls her into his arms and she buries her head in his chest and whispers, "he wants me to read Auden".

* * *

It is selfish of him, he knows, incredibly selfish, but he is relieved when months pass and she does not go anywhere. January turns to February and Raoul is well again and at home, and Christine stays in the present, and for Valentine's Day Erik takes her to dinner and plays her a piece he's composed for piano and she plays him a piece on her violin and they curl around each other in her bed, and February becomes March and he sees her every day and they spend Saint Patrick's Day wrapped in a bundle of blankets on his floor, sometimes kissing, sometimes getting up to change the record, but mostly holding each other and saying very little, and March turns to April and sometimes he catches a restless look in her eyes but mostly she seems content and he is just relieved to know he can phone her and she will answer.

April turns to May and hardly has the new month come in, the hawthorns blooming white, that she goes.

It is only a short absence. She is lying on his couch re-reading a section from one of her Browne books that he has borrowed, while he tinkers at an intransigent piece of code, when he feels a little shiver and turns around, and finds the book and a bundle of clothes alone on the couch.

He folds the clothes neatly, marks the page in the book, and goes to make tea, and hardly has the kettle boiled when he hears a little gasp, and goes back to the sitting room (such as it is, the couch takes up most of it) and finds her curled up, wrapped in the blanket that had been under her before.

Her cheeks are damp, the smile she gives him wobbly, and he drops to his knees beside her, and takes her hand, and asks, gently, what's wrong.

"I met Philippe," she whispers, and the tears come fresh again in her eyes as he wraps his arms around her, and pulls her close.

* * *

Philippe De Chagny loved Sorelli Conway and would have married her if someone had not planted a bomb on his boat and killed him.

Christine Daaé loves Sorelli Conway despite the fact that Sorelli died on the day she was born, despite the fact that the Sorelli of 1939 told her she never wanted to see her again.

He loves Christine Daaé, has loved her for more than a year now, and cannot imagine a life that does not have her in it.

(He knows she loves him too, though neither of them have used the words.)

* * *

History has never been his field. Any knowledge of it that he has ever possessed has been because of music, because of coding. But for love of Christine he sits down and determines to read everything he can on the Mother and Child Crisis, so he can talk to her about it, in some way. So he can try to keep up with her, and all of her brilliance.

(She would be brilliant even without the time travel, the most brilliant person that he has ever met.)

Raoul helps him, because Raoul lived through and was involved in the whole thing in some small way, and together that summer they go to her first conference, Raoul so gaunt and frail but smiling, his own heart bursting with pride.

This is the girl he loves, and they can all see now for themselves how wonderful she is, how clever and elegant and precise.

(His only fear is that she might travel, but that fear, as it happens, is needless.)

He can barely take in a word of what she says, his heart too busy throbbing, his throat too tight with pride and happiness to see her doing well. He glances at Raoul and finds his eyes watering, and reaches over to squeeze his hand.

After, when she answers "not a question so much as a comment" with diplomacy and aplomb, Raoul grins and leans over to him and whispers, "she's going to be absolutely fantastic."

His own heart is too full to speak.

When the conference breaks up, they retreat to Raoul's place for celebrations. Anea is gone to Stockholm to see her sister, but she sent a message to wish Christine well and added her certainty that the paper would go down without a problem. Raoul produces the old bottle of chartreuse, and they have a finger of it each, and then the music of one of the new jazz records wraps around them, and Erik smiles at Christine, this impossible and beautiful and perfect girl and asks, "May I have this dance?"

* * *

It is November when, in the darkness of Carton lane after nightfall, he meets a girl of seventeen.

A girl of seventeen, who is really Christine at seventeen thrown into the future, and she has spent weeks warning him about this day, that her younger self would appear naked and a little frightened but determined not to show it, and he's been planning ahead to this night since the very first time she told him, never mind the hundred and tenth.

As it happens she is gone now, somewhere into the past or maybe the future, so it is just him to meet her as she was, the girl who both is and is not his Christine, but is on her way to being her.

Wrapped in his heavy coat, with a spare coat for this girl who remembers this night so well she has told him about it in detail, and a flask of tea just for good measure, he settles into the darkness of the lane, and waits.

(Afterwards, when he gets home, she will be asleep in his bed, the her of these times, home again and safe. And he will take her into his arms, and tease her about being tiny at seventeen and she will be indignant and he will be adamant, and they will wrap themselves deeper into the blankets, and tease the night away.)

* * *

Christmas is just as quiet as last year, and his dilemma is what to get her as a gift. Jewelry is out of the question, on the grounds of her traveling, necklaces and bracelets and rings and earrings and even watches all far too easy to lose if she loses track of her clothes. She has never pierced her ears, never wears a watch, only ever buys secondhand smartphones, to spare herself the risk of losing something expensive.

(She doesn't even drive, the risk too great. What if she disappeared from behind the wheel? How could it ever be explained if the car hit something? No. She has never driven. And she has no intention of ever starting.)

His dear Christine, so pragmatic. And sometimes he wonders if this is how she always would have been, or is she pragmatic because she needs to be?

Another one of those questions that no one could ever answer, and every time it comes to him he sets it aside.

There is nothing to be gained in trying to separate out the pieces of her.

At Christmas, he just wants to sink into his love for her.

(In fairness, he wants to do that every day.)

Anea lays out the dessert, a tiramisu, and he makes cocoa with a small dash of chartreuse for the four of them, and with the carols playing low, and Christine and Raoul's talking to each other quietly out of ear shot, he cannot imagine Christmas any other way.

(It is a far far cry, from many of the Christmases he has known.)

* * *

He has spent weeks composing the perfect piece to ring in the New Year. It has been a project of his, between his several work projects and getting to hold her in his arms, all for the sake of this, for one night when they can pretend they are normal, when they can have each other without anything else, the recorded notes of his fingers on the piano keys soft and slow.

They don't speak. There are no words that would do, no words to express the fullness of his heart, and how it is to have her in his arms.

Somewhere, the fireworks light up the sky at the stroke of midnight, flashes of them escaping in through the cracks in the blinds, lighting the room and lighting her face, the tears clinging to her eyelashes like beaded jewels, but they are not tears of sadness, not tears of grief, of unhappiness, just tears of love, tears of so much, and he swallows, and brushes his lips against hers.

She angles her mouth, just enough that he can taste her, and his heart thrills and she sighs, and that sigh is love, is all that they need to breathe into the world.

Her cheek is soft, cradled in his palm.

* * *

She is not his to keep, not his to lay claim to and never will be and never should be, but she is his to love, as he is hers, and what he would not give, just to spend the rest of his life in her arms.

* * *

They spend Valentine's Day tucked in against each other, his blankets a cocoon to keep her safe, and with her hand curled around his hip, and her head on his chest, he cannot imagine any better way to live.

He kisses her hair, and kisses her closed eyes, and presses his cheek to her forehead, and sighs.

(That she wants him, just as he is, will never cease to be a wonder.)

* * *

In March she comes to him, fresh from the past, fresh from a year unknown and a place unidentified and people unspecified.

She has been gone two days, though later she will tell him that to her it was an hour at most. But now he stands from his computer, from modeling a scientific artefact whose name he is not sure of, and before he can reach for her, before he can kiss her, she takes him in her arms, and his heart stutters to feel her so close again, stutters as she smiles up at him, her eyes shining so blue and so soft, and before he can speak, before he can get his breath, she whispers, "I love you," and it is the first time, the first time she has spoken it, the first time either of them has spoken it, and he might ask her where she was, might ask her what has changed things that she is speaking it now, but she is so happy and his heart is so full and it is her right to keep her secrets, her right to treasure something that must be so sacred and keep it close.

So he does not ask her, but he does kiss her, and smile into her mouth and whisper, "I know."

("I know," and then, softly, "I love you too.")

* * *

The scones are still fresh from the oven when she goes. He nibbles one of them, for the sake of science, and finds it a little sweet but surprisingly tasty, then eats two more with a cup of tea, and sets the rest aside. She might be back before long.

* * *

There is still so sign of her by morning. He gathers the scones, and treks off with them for Malahide.

Raoul is at the kitchen table, glasses carefully perched on the end of his nose, reading what looks like the draft of Christine's thesis, when he arrives. Erik makes the tea, and sets down the scones, and Raoul cocks a brow at him as he shuffles the papers together.

"She's gone, I assume?"

"Since yesterday afternoon."

A nod, a contemplative look at the bundle of papers in front of him, and then glancing over at the calendar as Erik cuts and butters two scones.

A grin spreads slow across Raoul's face. "April 1951." And it doesn't make sense to Erik, not at first, he thinks it's some reference to the thesis and it is in a way, and then it dawns on him that that must be where Christine is gone to.

He is about to ask how Raoul knows, when the old man taps the papers with a slender finger and says, "she spent a week, and loved every minute of it."

The happiness that thrills through Erik, to think of Christine happy, makes him smile as he passes Raoul the first scone, and waits for the verdict. And is it a trick of the light? Or is there a faint dampness in Raoul's eyes?

A faint dampness, and after he tests a piece of it, he looks up at Erik and there is an odd note of melancholy knowingness in his voice as he says, "it's years since I've had this recipe."

* * *

He doesn't remember much of the accident. The screech of brakes, a flash of light, the bang of his head on the steering wheel, the pain that roared in his shoulder.

It is all jumbled fragments. Blue and red, and voices, someone asking him his name (Erik Joseph Ansborough), asking him the date (17 April 2016), asking him who the president is (Michael D.), asking him question after question and shining lights in his eyes that make his head ache. Someone touches his shoulder and he hears a cry from very far away but it's from him, it's from him…

He doesn't want to remember.

He doesn't want to have to know.

* * *

Broken ribs, a broken shoulder that needs surgery, a concussion and that's why he can't keep his thoughts in order.

Where's Christine? (Gone, still.)

Will he be able to play again?

* * *

Anea is the first face he recognises.

Raoul is the second.

"I told them she's out of the country," Anea says.

"I told them I was your grandfather," and Raoul's smile is gentle.

* * *

The day after the accident, Christine comes to see him. A Christine from the future, lines around her eyes that he has never seen before, a new softness in her smile.

It is the first time a future Christine has come to him.

(He wonders what it means. Is it good, that she has been pulled back here to his side? Or is it — like with Philippe De Chagny and his death — a sign that his own days are numbered?)

(Is his concussion worse than a concussion?)

Sweat beads cold on his skin, as if she is an angel of death and not Christine, his Christine just older.

(She comes back and visits Raoul on a semi-regular basis. Why should it be a bad sign?)

She settles in the chair beside his bed, and he swallows as he finds his voice. "Where are you coming from?" He's hoarse to his own ears.

She sighs. "Ten years from now."

"And am I…" Best to get it over with, out of the way, but his tongue refuses to form the words, refuses to ask either if he is alive, or if he is dead.

She lays her hand gently on top of his. "You're doing just fine. Tired though. There's a lot going on."

He's alive, alive, and still with her by the sound of it. He breathes a little easier. "All good things I hope?" Ten years in the future, so this version of her is only a year or two older than he is now.

She smiles. "The best."

* * *

It is the next day when his own Christine comes. Anea is sitting with him, keeping him company, neither feeling much like speaking ahead of the surgery on his shoulder in the morning, when he hears running footsteps in the hall and knows it's her, knows it's her because he would know those footsteps anywhere, in any shade of darkness or light, and Anea smiles and stands because she knows them too.

Christine comes in like a whirlwind, her blonde hair tousled and tattered, and it's been a week and his heart almost stalls to see her, his mouth almost forgets how to smile and Anea hugs her but she pulls away and her face is splotched and red from crying, her eyes watery blue as she comes to him and he curls his fingers around her hand to draw her closer and there are fresh tears trickling down her cheeks, and he kisses her hair, kisses her forehead, kisses her nose, kisses any part of her face he can, and whispers, "still have one good arm to hold you with" and right now that seems more important than anything else in the world, the single most important fact, and she kisses him and her lips taste of the salt of tears and he doesn't know why he says it, doesn't know what compels him, but he whispers, "marry me" and it's not even a question and he already knows he'll still be in her life in ten years, and she nods and presses herself closer and whispers, "yes."

* * *

The promise of their wedding carries him through his surgery, carries him through the days in hospital, and she comes every day and kisses him and presses herself close and it doesn't matter that it will be months before he can play properly again so long as he will play properly again and she will be at his side.

They fix a date for the wedding, 21 May (her own choice), and he's happy just to have it as soon as possible, would marry her still in hospital if he could, and she doesn't travel at all in the weeks leading up to it, and Anea insists that he stay with them while he recovers.

Raoul has an old piano, and he gets it tuned, and in the flickering light of a fire in the grate, leans forward from his armchair, and promises it to Erik as a wedding gift.

* * *

Why would they bother with a big wedding? When there are two people they care about more than any other in the world still living?

Why would they even bother with a priest, when a registrar would do?

* * *

The morning of their wedding, he dresses in his best suit. He is still stiff and sore, the pain in his ribs unbelievable if he coughs, and his shoulder keeps him from doing up the buttons of his shirt. Anea helps him, and when he protests she shushes him, and tells him he is the closest thing in the world she has to a grandson.

(She is not old enough to be his grandmother, but his eyes water at her words and he nods silently, and lets her fuss.)

(He spent most of last night with Raoul, neither of them saying much of anything, but before he left Raoul eased himself out of his armchair, and drew himself up to his full height and hugged him, and said he couldn't think of any better man to love Christine.)

(When Christine's own tears come, after they have signed their names to the paper that makes them husband and wife, at the thought that her father has missed it, Erik hugs her close with his good arm, and doesn't say a word, just lets her be.)

(When her father does come, afterwards, to their small celebration in Raoul's house, and this is her father from shortly before he died, Erik squeezes the man's hand, and promises to love her for the rest of her life, and Alex Daaé smiles, a little sadly, and says, "I've never doubted you would.")

* * *

That time pulls her out of her own wedding reception he should not be surprised over.

He sits on the couch with Alex, each of them sipping small glasses of Raoul's chartreuse, and Sinne Eeg's cover of 'The Windmills of Your Mind' spinning slowly on the record player.

That time decides to return her, barely ten minutes later, catches him by surprise, and sets the chartreuse down, and pulls her close with his good arm, and she kisses him and whispers, "I love you" and he wonders where she's been but doesn't ask because it doesn't matter, not now, not when she's here, and he smiles into her mouth and whispers, "I love you too."

(Tomorrow she will tell him about May of 1945, about Sorelli and how she loves her back, and his heart will ache with love, and with relief that she is happy, and with thankfulness for a woman who has been dead as long as she has been alive, and he will tell her "that's the best thing I've ever heard," and it will be, it will be.)


	3. 3

She comes and goes, he wears her wedding ring on a chain around his neck, his own ring on his finger, and when she is gone his hand strays to that little band of gold resting over his heart, and when she is back he holds her tighter, and thinks of how unfair it is, that someone is always left bereft.

(When she is with him, Sorelli is without her. When she is with Sorelli, he is without her. No matter who she is with, she is without someone.)

(Why can all times not exist at once?)

* * *

She is gone, and he takes the train to Bray. It is somewhere he has never been, and somewhere, too, that he feels he will be coming to a lot.

A taxi takes him to the graveyard where Sorelli Conway lies.

His arm is still in a sling, or else he would have brought flowers, but they would be too awkward to manage with only one hand, and he cradles his arm close, and decides that, next time, he will bring some.

Lilies, perhaps. But that seems cliché. Maybe tulips, for a splash of colour.

The rows of headstones, neatly arranged, every one a slightly different shape, a different hue. Some black, some brown, some white, some marble, some stone darkened with the damp mist. The little pebbles over each grave, the concrete borders around them, like frames for containing memories.

(When he was small, when his grandfather would bring him to see his mother's grave and he didn't quite understand death or religion or beliefs except that his mother was in Heaven but they could visit her here, he was always afraid of accidentally setting a foot within those frames, in case he would lose his leg, in case the dead would follow him home in his dreams.)

There was a priest at the funeral, Raoul told him, but there was no service, only the 'Our Father', and some music, and he had to recite Auden from memory, because his vision was too blurred with tears to read it. And he followed it with Dylan Thomas.

_Rage, rage, against the dying of the light…_

Sorelli's discomfort with religion began when she was ten and her father died. It became a disagreement with the institution of the church, when they supported Franco in Spain, and an argument in 1951, when she saw how they had tried to control, to domineer.

It was her own choice, not to have a service.

It was Christine, a very future Christine gone back, who decided on the 'Our Father.'

(And Raoul has decided the same, for himself someday, but Erik tries not to think of it.)

He looks down, now, on the name of the woman who is not his rival but who is bound to him, nonetheless, by that beautiful, amazing, impossible girl whose heart they share, and he swallows, and through the mist in his eyes whispers, "I promise I'll love her the rest of my life."

* * *

He has always considered himself a straight man. Well, mostly straight. There have been times he has tilted his head and wondered, but they have been few and far between and the other 95% of the time he has been solely attracted to women.

That he looks at the album of old photographs, and concedes within himself that Philippe de Chagny was a handsome man in a stern sort of way is not enough to shake his own sense of himself.

Besides, it is the woman sitting beside Philippe, what looks like a laugh threatening to break through her features, that truly draws his eye, a wrap around her shoulders, a pale dress, her dark hair curled.

Looking at the photo, he might almost suspect Christine has a type, and that type is angular features and dark hair.

Not the worst type to have, he supposes.

The photo is dated 31 May 1938. The last ever taken, of Philippe and Sorelli together.

He closes the photo album over on the memories of them, and passes it back to Raoul.

"They're lovely," he says, and they are. He never would have thought to ask about photos, but Christine is away again (and he can't wait for her to get home, and tell him with that happiness in her eyes where she has been) and he decided to visit Raoul, who smiled to see him and suggested the albums. And what a wonderful suggestion it has been.

"I think you'll like this one more." And there is a glimmer in Raoul's eyes that must have been just the same at twenty and twenty-five, as he hands over another leather-bound album, and the dates 1945-1950 on it.

Erik settles it in his lap, and opens the first page, and his heart leaps, his breath catching in his throat.

There, on the page before him, is Christine.

* * *

Christine in 1945. Christine in 1948, in 1951. Christine in 1964 and 1969 and 1970 and 1977 and 1981 and 1986 and 87 and 89. Hundreds of Christines, and some of them are _his _Christine, his Christine as he knows her now, as he loves her now or will love her in a year or two and some of them are Christines from far in the future. Christine in twenty years, in thirty years, in forty years. Christine, growing old on the pages here in front of him, Christine with Sorelli, her sharp angles growing soft with age, with Raoul who never seems to change much, a few more lines in his face, his hair a little whiter, the same grin, the same spark in his eye.

And all of this has happened, and will happen, and what is the correct tense to use? Past, for Raoul? Present, for him, looking at it, unable to touch? Future, for Christine, who is here and will be there?

His fingers brush over her printed face, and he swallows.

* * *

There were soldiers in World War I, and surely other wars too, who were musicians, who were pianists, who went to fight and came back with only one arm and still they composed, and he wonders if this is how they felt, sitting down before a piano for the first time since the accident.

The keys are smooth beneath his fingers, even as his left arm is heavy in its sling, and he thinks of the Christines he has seen, who belong to future and past both, and he thinks of his own Christine, in the library, surrounded by scattered papers and notes, and how she has not seen the photos, and how the fact of _his_ seeing them feels a little like an intrusion though Raoul says he has her blessing, the blessing of a future her.

She looks so happy, in all of these photos, so happy with Sorelli beside her, Sorelli laughing, Sorelli leaning in as if she might steal a kiss, if there was no one to capture the moment.

(She looks so happy, every time she draws him into her arms, every time he kisses her, every time he stirs awake in the night and finds her watching him.)

The notes that slip from beneath his fingers hang still in the air around him.

* * *

("It's only right," her curls are soft, brushing his cheek, "that you should have two people to love you.)

* * *

A new book has taken up residence on her desk. He came in to ask her if she wanted tea, and found her gone but the book is there, an ancient-looking notebook, and he strokes his fingers over the title.

_Mo Scéal Féin, _and the name _Sorelli Conway_.

It crosses his mind, just for a moment, that he could open it. That he could peek into its pages, could read the history written here, the handwriting he has never seen, that belongs to a ghost.

Just for a moment, he thinks of it.

Then he lifts his hand away from the book.

It is not his right to open it, not his right to pry. If Christine wants to share the contents of its pages with him, then that is her right to decide. What is written there is her story, her story as much as Sorelli's.

Their story. Not his to treat as his own.

* * *

("I'd like to hug her." To hug her, and thank her for loving Christine, for caring for Christine, for being there to keep her from being alone, where he cannot follow. To hug her, and sit down with her, just once.)

* * *

His arm comes out of the sling, the physio strengthens his shoulder. He buys a new car, cheap and secondhand, and goes for a few practice drives to get used to being on the road again. Christine joins him, and they go to Connemara for a weekend, his hands steady and firm on the wheel, and lay flowers at the grave of Noël and Phyllis Browne, a silent tribute, to years of research and writing, and an acquaintance forged in a hospital in Dublin in 1938, sitting at Sorelli's bedside.

(Erik knows enough of the story to know there are no words he could put it into.)

(He knows, too, there might be notes he could set it to, if he had the confidence to try his violin for the first time since the injury.)

She sleeps in the car on the way home, and it's hell on his shoulder but he'll never admit that instead of waking her to walk inside he scooped her into his arms and carried her, her head a heavy and welcome weight against his shoulder, her breath soft and warm against his neck in the cool night air.

(If he could hold her in this moment, keep her close and safe from the grief that the past inflicts on her, from the memories of what she has been through…)

He kisses her hair and knows she is not his to keep. His to have, here and now, but never his to keep still forever.

* * *

He buys a print of a photograph of Sorelli through the RTÉ Archive, one taken in 1964.

He tells himself it's because of Christine, and it is in a way. Because of how the two of them loved (love) each other all those years in the past.

In the photo, Sorelli is 50. To him, here, the age seems an impossible one to reach. He is 31, and sometimes it feels very old, like too many memories to look back on, and also too few, half-intangible. To have fifty years to look back on is unfathomable.

(To have 93 years, like Raoul, impossible. Impossible to even wonder over.)

But Sorelli, this Sorelli, that he has framed and set on the piano and that Christine has smiled, just slightly, to see, is 50, but she doesn't seem it, her hair dark and carefully twisted back, her high-collared shirt brushing her chin, her gaze a little stern, a little knowing. There is something regal and elegant in her face, something piercing about those dark eyes, something about the crease of her mouth that suggests she might almost smile, might almost be amused at the photographer and how she has found herself, and there are the lines of ancient grief, webbing about the corners of her eyes.

He wonders what she was like. What she was like at 50 and at 30 and at 70. Wonders what it would be like to sit down and talk to her, wonders at how she would laugh, at how those features might soften to hear of Christine.

He can hear her voice, in any number of interviews, any number of films, at almost any number of ages from 31 to 78. He knows how she sounded, the precise cadence of her accent, but what he does not know is how she would breathe the name _Christine_, or how she would speak of her. And he doesn't know what he would talk to her about, if he could sit down and have the chance, but he does know he would talk to her about Christine, and that she would surely be pleased to hear of her.

(Has she heard of him?)

(Raoul had. So she must have too, right?)

* * *

He could think about the scent of her hair, could think about the softness of it beneath his fingers. Think about her head against his chest and her arms around him and how she sighs. Think about where she was yesterday and how she came to him a little sad but smiling and hugged him. Think about where she is liable to go next, or the piece he is composing for her, or how she suggested this song for them to dance to, Nat King Cole singing 'Stardust.'

He could think a whole multitude of things, with her in his arms, but he chooses to let himself not think of any of them.

Instead he closes his eyes, and nuzzles into her hair as they sway slowly with the music, and lets the song loop back to the start.

_And now the purple dusk of twilight time_

_Steals across the meadows of my heart_

* * *

There is a day in late October, cool and crisp with a hint of frost that he feels in his bones and that makes his shoulder ache with stiffness. A day with a pale blue sky, and the slightest breeze.

He's not getting anything done, neither composing nor coding nor reading. Christine is somewhere and he might go to see Raoul but Anea has taken him for one of his check-ups, so Erik is left wholly alone.

Day drinking is never something he has subscribed to, but he pours himself a glass of red wine that he will likely savor all evening and into the night, and sits on the couch and closes his eyes, and sighs.

He is almost asleep, when a crash makes him jolt awake. He combs a hand through his hair, takes a sip of wine determined to look alert for Christine, but it is not Christine that has arrived.

Not Christine, but her father.

Alex.

Alex, wearing a coat that was clearly just pulled out of Erik's wardrobe, his hair light blond and a little long and in disarray.

A younger Alex than the one that attended their wedding, but an older one than the one that he first met.

Alex stops to see him, his eyes widening, before he shakes himself, and crosses the room.

Erik nods for him to sit in the other chair.

"When did you marry her?" The voice is just as he remembered it, just the lightest trace of the accent that he hears sometimes from Christine.

"Five months ago." And he pours a second glass of wine, and nudges it across the table.

Alex nods. "I'm glad." And his smile is just a little watery when he says, "I couldn't think of a better son-in-law."

* * *

He takes tea with Raoul on All Souls' Day. Neither of them are religious, but Raoul is a little more reflective than usual, almost melancholy, something thoughtful creased into the lines of his face, the tilt of his head, the slight way he worries his lip.

It is either the best or the worst time to ask, but Erik supposes asking any time is better than leaving it, and maybe never getting the chance.

He swallows a scalding sip of tea and sets the mug down, and raises his heads to meet the older man's gaze.

He should have asked him a long time ago. Maybe as far back as when they first knew each other.

"Tell me what Sorelli was like."

A faint smile twitches at the corner of Raoul's mouth, and he nods.

* * *

Sometimes, when she is gone, he composes. Sometimes he gets through a week's worth of coding in a day. Sometimes he reads. Always he visits Raoul.

What always settles him more than anything, is when he sits down with her sketchbook.

She told him, early in their relationship, that he was welcome to look through her sketchbook any time he wants, so long as he promises not to laugh at her. Why he would ever laugh at her for her art he could not imagine, because her art is the most beautiful he's ever seen.

So many pieces. Sketches of fireplaces, skies full of stars, of her books, of trees and the library and people going about their daily lives. Hospital scenes, from her visits back to Sorelli, some of the faces recurring over and over aging and changing slightly each time.

(A whole progression of Noël Browne, the first one with a date in 1938 though she could only have sketched it when she got home, the most recent dated April 1997.)

So many sketches of _him_, and it's strange looking at himself rendered in pencil, but his face doesn't seem so terrible, softened by her hand. Sketches of him smiling, sketches of him laughing, sketches of him at his piano or tall and graceful at the window with his violin or with his glasses perched at the end of his nose, sketches of him caught unawares, a softness about his eyes that he never knew he wore before, and it takes his breath away, each time, to know that this is how she sees him.

Sketches of Anea, of Raoul, of her father, of people who are gone.

Sketches of Philippe De Chagny, the broad angles of his face.

Sketches of Sorelli, and those are the ones he does not look at it. It feels too much like prying.

(He feels closer to Christine, just to hold the sketchbook in his hand.)

* * *

Sometimes, he knows she is back when he hears a crash, or finds the clothes that were on the couch missing, or when the door opens and she comes in looking half-drowned because it's lashing rain outside.

He makes her tea, and sits her by the fire, and then gives her space to tell him where she's been, if she wants to, and most of the time she does, and often she asks him what he has been doing, even if she has only been gone half an hour though to her it might be half a day or more.

It feels, a little, like meeting each other again after a long journey.

Sometimes he knows she is back when he finds the lights on in her study, which she has rushed to after coming home because she has had some sudden thought for her thesis, or he hears her voice, on the phone to Raoul, discussing some new point or verifying something small.

(He could listen to her all day, even when he doesn't quite know what she's talking about because it's something sixty years in the past that's not referenced in most of the books.)

Sometimes, he only knows she is home when she wraps her arms around him, and he is at his piano, or at his computer, only half-aware of the world beyond his fingertips, when the warmth of her sends a thrill through him, when her lips brushing his neck make his heart stutter.

("I missed you," she says, and he smiles and leans back against her and says, "I missed you too.")

* * *

He has been working on it for months, covertly, always when she has been away. Working on it even when he only had one hand to work on it with, caressing the piano keys with all the tenderness that made his heart ache, desperate for her touch.

But the piece is not about him, and how he feels. Not really, only a bit. Enough, for the contrast, for the twining of all these futures and pasts together, all these presents and their history and how they have come to be.

He is hers and she is his and she is Sorelli's too and Sorelli is hers as Sorelli was also Philippe's and Philippe belonged to Sorelli too, and to Raoul in the way of brothers, and Raoul has been all of theirs.

All of these connections, looping and interlinking and twisting.

He composed it for himself, and for Christine and Sorelli, and all of them. And if Christine is the only one who will ever hear it, perhaps that is the only way it could be, the only right way.

Christmas Eve, and tomorrow they will spend with Anea and Raoul, but tonight is theirs, and theirs alone.

The fire crackling in the grate, her green dress that makes her eyes shine bright, her hair gold and soft as silk. Just for the occasion, just for Christmas, he puts on his suit, and draws her into his arms, and kisses her, and holds her, holds her a long moment, before he leads her to the piano bench, and sits her down.

The first notes flow from his fingers on the keys, and she leans into him, and sighs, and he knows she knows, knows she feels, just who this music is for.

* * *

Raoul has been melancholy all winter, though melancholy is perhaps too strong of a word. Reflective, perhaps. Remembering, and reminiscing. Their talks have, more and more, been of Sorelli, been of Christine in the past, been of Philippe, as if there are things he needs to speak, now, while he still has time.

(Erik takes each of these things, and cradles them close, and swears to remember them. No matter what else happens, he will remember.)

He has spoken, often, to Christine, in quietly hushed tones, and to Anea, and Erik has done his best not to listen, his best not to hear. He has never wanted to pry.

He has heard of Jack, of the Jack that Raoul loved once and who died, and the thought of it goes straight to his heart. He has always known that Raoul is gay, known it with an odd certainty though they've never, truly, spoken of it. But he learns of Jack from a snatch overheard as Raoul told Christine, and it twisted his heart to know this thing, and he decided he would not say anything, would stay quiet about his newfound knowledge.

Two days later, Raoul tells him himself, in the same soft tones in which he told Christine, and a tear glistens in his eye at the memory of a grief more than sixty years old, and Erik hugs him, because there are no words that can do.

The piece he starts to compose that night, in the cold of early January, he finishes in early March. It takes two weeks before he is certain he is ready. He tests it on the violin, feels the bow steady and smooth in his hand in a way he hardly dreamed he would ever be able to feel it again, and something clicks deep inside, some certainty that this is it, this is how it is supposed to be.

He plays it through twice, standing before the window, no one to hear him but himself, because Christine is at the archive chasing up some half-ancient reference, and it is not that he has tried to hide it from her, but he has found it easier to compose in her absence, this one piece, easier to feel his way through it.

He knows it is finished. Knows it is as finished as it will ever be.

He tucks the violin and bow into the case, swirls on his coat, and goes out to his car, to drive out to Malahide, and see Raoul.

It is 18 March, 2017.

(And he plays the piece for Raoul, this piece of grief and love across decades, love despite death, and it is a little of a lot of things, but mostly it is of Raoul, and his Jack, who he lost so long ago, and as the final note hangs in the air, the tears trickle down Raoul's cheeks, and Erik knows that he understands.)

(It will only be in the days to come, that Erik will find the letter that Raoul slipped into his violin case. Only in the days to come, that he will realize that Raoul's fingers, when he squeezed his hand, clung on a little longer than usual. Only in the days to come, that the memory of the soft "thank you," breathed in his ear, will drive the air from his chest.)

* * *

It is Anea, the next afternoon, who tells him that Raoul is in hospital, and it's bad.

It is an odd certain knowledge, that settles in his chest, that tells him this is it.

It is the tears in Christine's eyes, the way she leans into him, that tells him he would bear a whole world of grief just to spare her from it.

It is the soft smile that Raoul gives him, in spite of the oxygen, in spite of his eyes half-closed, in spite of the morphine and medications, that tells him he already knew.

* * *

When Raoul breathes his last, his fingers so cold beneath Christine and Erik's both, it feels as if the whole world has tilted upside down.

* * *

For one hour, late in the night, he sits by the open coffin, and cannot think of any word he could possibly say.

* * *

It was Raoul's own request, not to have a church service. Just a priest, and a few prayers, and Christine reciting Auden. And that is what he gets, but it is he, Erik, who gently persuades Christine to play her violin in the cold and the mist, because Raoul always loved it, and it is he who decides to recite 'To His Coy Mistress', because Raoul would love the irony of it.

_But at my back I always hear_

_Time's wingéd chariot, hurrying near_

He feels very old and very tired, watching them lower the coffin into the ground, Christine leaning heavy on his arm, Anea dabbing tears from her eyes.

It is all he can do to keep his own tears at bay.

It is the last service he can carry out, to watch with clear eyes, as they commit Raoul to the earth.

* * *

He ought to have expected, that time would pull Christine away again, so soon after Raoul's funeral. Two days, all the time they get to grieve, all the time they get to be normal, and one minute he is holding her, trying to breathe around a fresh bolt of pain to think that he will never hear that voice again, never see that soft slow smile again, and the next she is gone, pulled away, and all he can do is clutch at the air where she was.

For a burning moment he wants to kick something, wants to smash and hit and take time and pull it apart with his hands, bend it so Christine never has to go, so that Sorelli is here and Raoul is alive and young and well, twist it so that none of this _shit _has to be this way, none of this _fucking mess_, so they can all just be together and happy, just happy.

One burning moment, but he is so tired, and the rage drains from him, the anger and frustration and it's just the spreading numbness, just the emptiness that Christine is gone and Raoul is dead, and where is he supposed to go now, when she is gone? What is he supposed to do? Take his violin and spend his time playing music in the graveyard?

They would lock him up for being unhinged.

His eyes fall on _Mo Scéal Féin. _He's not sure she's ever opened it, not sure she's ever peeked inside, but Sorelli wrote it, not for her so much as for the past, for what it took to get them together, for the memories.

She wrote it to have a record.

Raoul told him to always keep a record.

* * *

That the first memories he writes are the ones Raoul gave him is perhaps only right.

That the next are of Christine is the most natural thing in the world.

That writing them down keeps them safe forever, makes it easier to breathe, and when the tears come he lets them.

That no one would ever believe such a document was telling the truth—

But what is truth, really? Just what someone insists it must be, from memory.

* * *

She smells of happiness, and a bright day in May, when she wraps her arms around him, and presses herself into his back.

He smiles down at the page, and turns, ever so slightly, just enough to brush her lips with his own.


End file.
